This reminds me of something that happened when I was planning my own wedding.

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Hampstead Heath is a beautiful big park in London, which I just adore. At the top of the park is Kenwood House, an old manor house which is now run as museum and restaurant.Kenwood House is licensed to perform marriages and I loved the idea of having my wedding there. I could picture myself coming out of this big white building, family and friends around me and looking out over rolling parkland at all the families picnicking and the kids running around. I just thought it would be perfect.

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Hiring a manor house does not come cheap but I was encouraged to see that they also do a reception package in the kitchen, which is a good sized room, and can be decorated in something called “shabby chic”: which seems to involve a lot of meadowy flowers in mismatched vintage milk jugs and oldie worldie style table cloths and doiles and so on.

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The Old KitchenPleasant but visibly "Below Stairs"

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I checked the prices on the kitchen wedding and predictably it was still way out of our budget so I put the idea aside, set myself down to organise something more realistic and thought no more about it.

No more that is, until my Mum mentioned that she’d seen the package advertised with the slogan “Have your wedding below stairs.” She was genuinely freaked out by the idea and literally could'nt imagine why anyone would find the idea attractive. Her exact word were: “My whole life is about trying to get away from life “below stairs!” I never want to go back.”

I should point out here that my Mum is from the post war baby boomer generation and benefited from the social mobility of that period. She has never worked as a servant and, given the times she grew up in, it would have been deeply surprising thing if she had.

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Her own mother however (my grandmother), was “in service” from the age of 12 and clearly, the experience has cast a long enough shadow that the idea of celebrating anything “below stairs” still carries with it a sense of horror and shame. Even for the next generation. Even 70 years later. And yet this response had not, for a second occured to me.

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In case you were wondering: this is how it turned out in the end!

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What’s interesting to me here is the difference made by that one additional generation, that can transmute a grossly insensitive act of cultural appropriation into a perfectly acceptable wedding theme. An object of aspiration even.You really have to laugh at capitalism sometimes. They would have had me break the bank to buy a sanitised pastiche of my own family history.

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Instead of which, we had a quaint registry office ceremony and pub reception, encorporating all the authentic customs of the 21st century white working class. It was just just so cute. I can't wait to see a knock off version at 4 times the equivelent price in 70 years time.